Europe Invites Biotech Debate ; the EU's Farm Ministers Will Hold a Special Meeting Next Week to Hear Expert Evidence on Biotechnology

Article excerpt

Desperate to catch up with the United States on the cutting edge
of biotech discovery, European governments face one major hurdle
that has nothing to do with science or money: their voters.

Europeans are increasingly skeptical about genetic engineering,
whether it be the genetic modification of crops such as corn, or
the cloning of human cells. And their doubts have had an impact:
the European Union has approved no new genetically modified
organisms (GMOs) for the past three years.

But attempts to boost consumer confidence with more and stricter
regulations have run into difficulties on a different front.
American exporters - who grow millions of acres of genetically
modified corn, soy, and canola - say Europe's new rules
discriminate against them. The Bush administration agrees, and is
urging Brussels to drop a new labeling law for GM foods. Another
trans-Atlantic trade war looms.

So, in a bid to overcome widespread disquiet, the European
Commission, the EU's executive arm, is launching a drive to thrash
out all the scientific and ethical questions in a continent-wide
consultation, using public-access websites, conferences, and public
debate.

"It is of strategic and long-term importance that Europe master
the new frontier technologies, in particular the life sciences and
biotechnology, and use them for the benefit of society," EC
president Romano Prodi said last week.

By the end of the year, the consultation involving politicians,
consumers, scientists, philosophers, businesspeople,
environmentalists, doctors, and farmers, is due to culminate in a
policy paper setting out Europe's strategic vision for biotech.

"A driving force" behind the campaign is the fear that "without
knowing what we are doing, we are putting the brakes on European
industry taking advantage of new progress," says Pia Ahrenkilde,
spokeswoman for EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom.

"Europe cannot afford to miss the opportunity that these new
sciences and technologies offer," the EC said in a discussion paper
designed to launch the debate. But it also acknowledged that
"public perception ... represents a challenge for all public
authorities."

The European public is not convinced that the opportunities the
Commission sees are worth the risks that worry many citizens.

While business leaders and scientists promise solutions to world
hunger from genetically modified food crops, or new cures for
disease by splicing human genes, European consumers are more likely
to perceive threats to the environment, or the danger of people
making identical clones of themselves.

Eurobarometer, the EU's polling body, found in a 1999 study, for
example, that only 19 percent of respondents would be happy to eat
eggs laid by chickens fed GM corn, and that 37 percent felt that
biotech methods are morally acceptable in food production. That was
down from 50 percent in a similar survey three years earlier,
reflecting a general drop in support for GM technology.

That attitude was dramatically illustrated last year in Britain,
where a group of anti-GMO protesters was acquitted by a jury on all
charges arising from their destruction of an experimental
cornfield. …